Current Projects

The major goals of this project are, in collaboration with the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health (MCAH) Division at the California Department of Public Health, to collect population-based data allowing for the ongoing monitoring of key maternal and infant health outcomes and access to maternal and infant health services in California, serving as an information resource for the development, targeting, implementation, and monitoring of intervention programs funded by the MCAH. Annual mail/telephone survey of 3,500-7,000 postpartum women in California, with methods modeled on CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. MIHA and PRAMS questionnaires have many shared elements. MIHA is designed to permit examination of social disparities in maternal and infant health, as well as population health overall.

With funding from the California Health Care Foundation, this project involves the addition and analysis of questions about perinatal mental health to the Maternal and Infant Health Assessment (MIHA) survey.

With funding from the NIH, this project seeks to determine the effects of chronic and acute aspects of community violence on maternal and infant health and racial/ethnic health disparities, and identify underlying psychological, behavioral and biological mechanisms of effect using statewide data for California on over 6 million mothers and infants over more than a decade.

With funding from the California Health Care Foundation, this project supports the addition of questions on maternity care experiences to the Maternal and Infant Health Assessment (MIHA) survey in 2023 and 2024, as well as analysis of results of the data collected. These questions support a respectful maternity care focus on and knowledge of the experiences of racism among birthing people in California.